Mts2000 for feeding local pd

[thesavo]

So I Used to host a local PD feed on broadcastify and I had to take it down when my old computer died.
I have since found a pro 2046, but I want to have that 800mhz scanner to scan for channels and I purchased an mts2000 handheld for 800mhz from ebay. Cost was about $46 shipped and had free programming. The only thing included is the radio body. I also asked the seller to program it for the one dispatch frequency here . I'll have him disable the PTT as well, which he said was not an issue. I know I need the following And looking for some advice .

Antenna. I plan to put up a discone or an 800 Mhz cut dipole outside. It has no rubber duck. Q: So will any sma to Bnc work fine or should I locate one from from a specific location?

Audio out. Since this has a proprietary mutli connector I see there are two types of headset adaptors.
Bdn-6676D - male threaded 3.5mm out and a built in ptt. I am looking for a schematic but presume it's a stereo TRS with mic being where the right channel.
ADP-MHT-M - 3.5mm, 2.5mm and PTT. Presumably mono phone plugs.

Q: Are these the only options for audio out? Is there anyway to get line level out and leave the built in speaker running for local monitor?

Battery. I see there are some inexpensive Chinese battery eliminators. As the unit will lay flat on a 1u rack shelf this should be adequate. Q: What other power options are available?

General
Q:Can anyone voice conserns with this? Or should it find another receiver? The pd office is only a couple of miles from my home and village isn't that large.

 

[mmckenna]

So I Used to host a local PD feed on broadcastify and I had to take it down when my old computer died.
I have since found a pro 2046, but I want to have that 800mhz scanner to scan for channels and I purchased an mts2000 handheld for 800mhz from ebay. Cost was about $46 shipped and had free programming. The only thing included is the radio body. I also asked the seller to program it for the one dispatch frequency here . I'll have him disable the PTT as well, which he said was not an issue. I know I need the following And looking for some advice .

Good on disabling PTT, thanks for doing that. Accidentally kerchunking the repeater isn't a good thing.

If it's an analog system then it should work fine. If you haven't purchased it yet, there are some better options. There are some simple analog 800MHz radios that will be a bit easier to use/interface. But if you've already purchased, you'll be OK.

Antenna. I plan to put up a discone or an 800 Mhz cut dipole outside. It has no rubber duck. Q: So will any sma to Bnc work fine or should I locate one from from a specific location?

I'd —strongly— encourage you to use a short flexible cable rather than an adapter. Adapters put a lot of strain on the antenna jack. The short whip of RG-58 or even RG-174 will take that stress off. Shouldn't matter which one you use, as long as it is long enough to seat down all the way. I don't recall ever having an issue with a female SMA adapter.

Audio out. Since this has a proprietary mutli connector I see there are two types of headset adaptors.
Bdn-6676D - male threaded 3.5mm out and a built in ptt. I am looking for a schematic but presume it's a stereo TRS with mic being where the right channel.
ADP-MHT-M - 3.5mm, 2.5mm and PTT. Presumably mono phone plugs.

Q: Are these the only options for audio out? Is there anyway to get line level out and leave the built in speaker running for local monitor?

The speaker level output is the only option. You can buy and old speaker mic and just recycle the connector, make your own adapter.
I don't know what the pinout is on the adapters, but I do know some of them had an earphone output that may work for what you want.

For schematics, www.batlabs.com is a great resource:

http://www.batlabs.com/images/mtsxacc.gif

Battery. I see there are some inexpensive Chinese battery eliminators. As the unit will lay flat on a 1u rack shelf this should be adequate. Q: What other power options are available?

Short of disassembling the radio, or cracking open a battery and feeding it with 7.5 volts, that's about it. A battery and charger is a bad idea since it'll cook the battery long term. The battery eliminators are 'good enough' for what you are doing.

General
Q:Can anyone voice conserns with this? Or should it find another receiver? The pd office is only a couple of miles from my home and village isn't that large.

Like I said above, if you haven't purchased yet, there are some better options out there. Getting an old 800MHz Maxtrac would be a good option as it'll have a line level output on the rear 16 pin connector. You can power it directly off 12 volts DC. It'll also have a mini-UHF connector on the back, but you still need the whip adapter as those antenna jacks are flimsy.

Kenwood makes some basic 800MHz analog mobiles that you should be able to find cheap. It'll have similar outputs on the back.

 

[thesavo]

Thanks for the quick Inital follow up and for the clear answers. Yes, already purchased and only thought of posting after. I often throw the cart in front of the horse. I was looking at the maxtrac, and gmc 300 radios but felt discouraged by the lack of radios with free programming and some of the pages on repeater builder. I figured I could always get another feed radio and this an be another monitor radio elsewhere.

I never thought of cannibalizing an old Mic set instead of the adaptor. It's going to lay with others on a1u shelf in a rack, with the top end facing out.
I just asked the seller to disable the tilt switch beacon as well.

I pickup this kit from Amazon as it is a conversion cable to uhf.

Amazon.com

Some additional questions.
Which maxtrac or Kenwood can you recommend. The frequency is simplex and about 850mhz.

 

[mmckenna]

Which maxtrac or Kenwood can you recommend. The frequency is simplex and about 850mhz.

Kenwood TK-980 would be a good one.
An 800MHz Maxtrac would be a good choice.
Or just find an old analog scanner.

 

[cmjonesinc]

Since you've already got a computer tied up for the scanner feed why not just buy a rtl sdr and use it for the audio?

 

[thesavo]

Are there any other programming requests I should ask for?

Since you've already got a computer tied up for the scanner feed why not just buy a rtl sdr and use it for the audio?

No more PC for my feeds. I'm using a barix instreamer classic. I tried to use an raspberry pi with an sdr. I found it difficult to setup and I couldn't get the audio to sound good.


The benefits of a barix is that it powers up in a second after a power failure and no Linux updates. I will try again with r-pi and sdr. I will not go back to a pc for feeding unless I want to host alpha tags. I still don't know what their upshot is.

 

[wa8pyr]

The benefits of a barix is that it powers up in a second after a power failure and no Linux updates. I will try again with r-pi and sdr. I will not go back to a pc for feeding unless I want to host alpha tags. I still don't know what their upshot is.

I've been using R-Pis for a couple of years now. Love them. I'm running them headless with no GUI (CLI only) and they're plugged into a UPS, so I rarely have trouble with them having to reboot. Pipe in the audio from the RX radio and they're working just fine.

I stopped doing alpha tags awhile back; the delay inherent in streaming caused too much delay between alpha tag appearance and audio start, and while I tinkered with settings a lot I could never get it right. In addition, the delay varied depending on where people were listening so I was never able to get a really consistent setting. If someone came up with a reliable way to stream tags via command line app on the R-Pi I might give it another try, but otherwise it's just not worth the hassle.

As far as the MTS2k, I second Batlabs as a resource. Pins 2 and 6 are what you're looking for on the accessory connector, but the suggestion to use an old speaker mike is even better; just disconnect the speaker and connect an isolation transformer in it's place, feed the other side of the isolation transformer to your feed appliance and you're all set.

 

[thesavo]

Interesting. I have ordered some some stereo isolation transformers already. Will I have any bleed over issues if I use isolator with two radios? Each feed is going to a separate feed applicance and a different channel of the isolator?

 

[wa8pyr]

Interesting. I have ordered some some stereo isolation transformers already. Will I have any bleed over issues if I use isolator with two radios? Each feed is going to a separate feed applicance and a different channel of the isolator?

You can certainly try it, but I wouldn't recommend it; you're talking about an inductive device, and while it would probably work fine the chances of cross-talk due to coupling are always there. With a stereo you could get away with some slight cross-talk since there's almost always something happening on both channels at the same time and it wouldn't be noticeable, but with radios Murphy says that one of them is almost always silent while the other is babbling so it would be more noticeable if it happens.

Isolation transformers are cheap so I never worried too much about it; the last bag of ten I bought cost less than ten bucks on eBay. Solder the appropriate connector cables on to either end and seal it up in a big hunk of heat-shrink tubing (I use plastic film cans myself) and you're off to the races:

10pcs/pack 600 : 600 Ohm 1:1 EI14 Isolation Transformer Audio Transformers N207 | eBay

AC impedance : EI14 600 : 600 Ohm. The primary and secondary windings are tightly coupled, there is sufficient pass frequency band, the original winding inductance is large, the leakage inductance is small, can reduce the influence of the hysteresis loss.

www.ebay.com

 

[thesavo]

You can certainly try it, but I wouldn't recommend it; you're talking about an inductive device, and while it would probably work fine the chances of cross-talk due to coupling are always there. With a stereo you could get away with some slight cross-talk since there's almost always something happening on both channels at the same time and it wouldn't be noticeable, but with radios Murphy says that one of them is almost always silent while the other is babbling so it would be more noticeable if it happens.

Isolation transformers are cheap so I never worried too much about it; the last bag of ten I bought cost less than ten bucks on eBay. Solder the appropriate connector cables on to either end and seal it up in a big hunk of heat-shrink tubing (I use plastic film cans myself) and you're off to the races:

10pcs/pack 600 : 600 Ohm 1:1 EI14 Isolation Transformer Audio Transformers N207 | eBay

AC impedance : EI14 600 : 600 Ohm. The primary and secondary windings are tightly coupled, there is sufficient pass frequency band, the original winding inductance is large, the leakage inductance is small, can reduce the influence of the hysteresis loss.

www.ebay.com

I thought that would be the case. I hadn't thought of making my own.